Much of the work I was able to achieve during this internship was infomred by Celia Hodent's wonderful The Gamer's Brain.

Her insights don't just provide a way to introduce UX thinking into the typical game development pipeline, but also a way to set up a common framework that everyone including developers and managers can converge upon, to help improve the overall engage-ability of the experience.

This was essential in ensuring collaboration between departments!

By the end of the internship, I was able to create three documents, with an increasing trend in clarity and precision as the project gained more direction over time.

WalkXR is meant to play out as an sprititual experience! This meant that UI that was too intrusive or broke the game's narrative would not be effective. Moreover, it needed to be steeped in the more subliminal and enigmatic nature of spirituality and spiritual awakening.

Creating an unobstrusive and immersive UI that is inspired by the rich visual culture and symbology related to spirituality was the main goal of this UI design.

This was the moodboard I was able put together to aid me in my explorations.

Since in-world UI prompts would be one of the major UI elements used in this game, I decided to explore some designs drew upon my moodboard. The major elements explored here were silhouettes and icons that would contextual information for the action prompted.

Not incorporating any typography for labels at this stage was a deliberate choice made to maintain immersion and a sense of mystery. While this may create some usability issues, the possibility for addressing this was relegated to later user testing.

In order to strike a balance between aesthetic and usablity, I decided to incorporate a few states: visible, focussed and active. These state would be activated based on user proximity and interaction.

Try out the working prototype!

Once a visual language was established, I was also asked to make the logo for the game! I decided to base this off of The Lotus Temple, the central structure that acts as a hub for all of the experiences within the game.

I was glad to have been given the opportunity to work on a project at such a ground level. Some of the suggestion I made and frameworks I put in place had a much more far reaching impact than I had imagined, informing a lot of the narrative choices and game mechanics.

I believe establishing a common framework for discussion here was crucial, as his ensured that the design and development teams did not work in silos. This ensured that any good insight or guideline was picked up early and was considered during development as opposed to an afterthought.